


as the poets say

by archerboy



Category: SKAM (TV)
Genre: Epic Love, Even as Achilles, Eventual Happy Ending, Eventual Smut, Greek Tragedy in Norway, Isak as Patroclus, M/M, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Slow Burn, The Iliad AU, Trojan War, the song of achilles au
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-09-21
Updated: 2017-09-21
Packaged: 2019-01-01 05:30:52
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death, Rape/Non-Con, Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,468
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12149640
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/archerboy/pseuds/archerboy
Summary: Scandinavia- if Greek and tragic.Isak, the timid son of a chieftain, is exiled to the land of Petter and his son after treasonous violence. Even, the child of a god and the "det beste av det norske," is bright, beautiful, and destined for greatness. Drawn together by a force stronger than themselves, Isak and Even grow together as warriors   and friends, against the wishes of the gods.But when word comes that Noora, the most beautiful woman in the world, has been kidnapped, they sail with a thousand ships to a distant land, where the pair must confront the inescapable will of fate and witness the transcendent nature of love.Or, a TSOA AU.





	as the poets say

**Author's Note:**

> I have wanted to write this for so long and I finally sat down and started! This is my first ever fic so please let me know what you think. Isak and Even changed my life irrevocably and I can so easily connect them to this epic and torturous love story.
> 
> This is an erratic combination of Ancient Greece and Norse cultures which didn't always correspond linearly so please forgive historical inaccuracies. Think of it as Greek tragedy set slightly northwest. ALSO please note this is a love story but also a war story in an oppressive patriarchal society- hence the tags.
> 
> TW for this chapter: marital abuse, marital rape, miscarriage, postpartum depression
> 
> Quoted text in bold! Thank you to my BAEta reader Lucy ily❤️
> 
> I hope you enjoy <3

Scandinavia, 50 B.C.

  
Terje Valtersen was a petty chieftain of a petty kingdom but an imposing man, with a hard brow and swaggering gait. The trials of war and the weights of birch lumber filled his frame with heavy muscles to match his gaze. His dark gold hair shone against the darkness of his furs, and the farmers offered him their sacrifices gladly, their own hair blackened by dust and sweat.

  
The first of seven sons, he lorded over the clan after his own father was wrinkled with age. Flanked by his herd of men, eyeing girl after girl as they were thrust before him. Terje married the quiet Marianne when she was twelve, as was tradition. Her family was not as famed (neither her father or any uncles had successes alongside the Romans, and the gods had not blessed their land). But she was beautiful, with a small face and long brown hair past her waist that danced in the breeze. That, and all her clan’s offerings- gold leaves, amulets, plentiful furs and skins- made her a suitable match.

  
She always smiled, and laughed, and sang, her hair trapped up in dyed cloth. It was suspected she was simple. She was slight next to her husband and his large dominion over seven brothers and seven wives and their sons and his soldier court and the farmers and the thralls. She was not fit to man the farm when he was gone. She would twirl until she collapsed in the mud or run around the longhouse late into the night hours when all the fires had been put out.

  
They did not suspect she would ever have a child.

  
The first time there was so much blood. Thirteen-year-old Marianne lay in her bed of furs with glassy tears painting her cheeks when the baby did not draw breath. She did not smile for weeks.  
And Terje built. He erected fences and longhouses and marble pillars for fertility. His kingdom sprawled over the grimy beaches to the narrow fjords and their sloping cliffs. His raids ended in victory, his men remained unscathed.

  
Only his wife indicated divine displeasure. His wife gave him no children. His gods gave him no children. There were no sons to manage the vast expanse of his kingdom or daughters to gift to some farmer’s son in exchange for pretty sacrifices.

  
His wife lay bruised and weeping on her back in their marriage bed night after night, much like the pale slave boys and girls whimpering on the other side of the wall.

  
*

  
At last she bore a son. The first of many, though of how many Isak would never learn.

  
Isak was born on the day when the sun reaches its highest point. Light sparkled off the water of the fjords and the gods seemed kind again. The baby cried and cried and Marianne cried with him in joy, though she was not aware of whether she clutched her nurse or the babe, whether she was alive or dead.

  
Terje arrived weeks later, his skin brown and his skin raided by new wounds, another victory to add among many. He had little interest in a son so small and slight. No ergi could not reign over the clan of Valtersen.

  
Marianne loved him so. She loved his light gold curls that curled around his ears and his laugh, high and sweet like hers. His skinny legs carried him well and he was eager to learn the alphabet runes. He babbled and chanted and delighted in their hidden meanings.

  
Isak was never sick. The plague had long come and gone but storms of ill still swept the countryside and took the weak children with them. The gods seemed to torment his father with his omnipresence. Even high children of neighboring tribesman were quick to evade the chieftain’s son who might never die.

  
Terje despised Isak’s scribblings and whittlings and uneasy songs. He was not the fastest, strongest, best, or brightest. He could not hunt or sing. Such men do not win fame and honor and till the land every inch of land. Terje sought favor in other sons, from other, less simple women.

  
*

  
Isak dreams of his mother, holding tightly to his hand, gazing across the sharp cliffs to a distant horizon, where her husband ventures and is sure to leave her behind forever. When the sun casts a flaming orange glow on her hair and skin she seems almost young again, like the gods have not yet forsaken her. Forsaken them. The bruises on her neck are barely visible, even when she throws her head back to laugh at something he has said. It is unfailingly satisfying to see her gray eyes burst with happiness; at least he makes her laugh. Isak tears at the long grass until he exposes bare patches of the earth. The sun burns his eyes and all thoughts of Terje and his own inability to hold a spear vanish from his mind. There are no vacant fields, just water stretching to the ends of the earth. To the ends of the universe.

It is only a dream.

  
*

  
More than ever the men of the north had violent and cunning enemies, and more than ever was Terje desperate to prove his invulnerability. Sons of chieftains and the sons of chieftains’ sons rode the long roads through the mountains to reach his stretch of land, which now encompassed miles of farms and longhouses and the waterfront opening the country to the south.

  
Every morning the men marched dutifully marched to the water to display piety to the sun and moon and earth and sea. Game was carried slung over slave shoulders to the fire and the crops were plucked in an early summer harvest.

  
Isak marvelled at the men who came. Harsh men with harsh tongues from the mountains who shed the burdens of their furs to reveal the taut muscles of their shoulders, the hard planes of their chests, the thick veins spidering down their arms. He blushed to look at them. Men from the south and east were darker; allies in raids spoke unfamiliar words. Dark hair coated their legs, traversed golden bellies before disappearing to places they kept hidden. He was able to stare-- only Terje’s oldest and most idiotic son.

  
He stood alone among the prizes- the white and silver cloaks fashioned from mountain beasts, the witch-stones, the iron cauldrons heavier than several young thralls. Swaying there, skin scrubbed pink by the cold water and a rough cloth, yellow hair braided away from his face, skin shining with oil from the east, he could almost believe he was a prize himself.

  
“You must stop squirming,” Anya, the old nurse who first held him, had said as she scraped the dirt and play sweat from his face. “This is important to your father.”

  
He was much too unimportant to be a prize, too easily disregarded. All his younger brothers were competing. Overwhelmed by a sudden burst of frustration, he tore away from the contests, where his father presided over the naked wrestlers, their bodies contorting and colliding in swells of passion.

  
Isak was suffocating; he ripped at his fine tunic, stumbling backward as he fought to free himself, temporarily sightless as the white cloth obscured his eyes. Suddenly he fell to the ground, a low grunt resounding from a boy with which he had collided. Gasping, he emerged from the gray half-light of his fabric prison and was blinded.

  
“Are you unharmed? Are you?"

  
Isak couldn’t form a response.

  
“All right.”

  
And with that, the boy was gone.

  
Breathless. Isak was breathless. The boy’s thin chest had been exposed where it hovered around his line of sight. His eyes were icy and piercing like the surface of the stream during frost, his dark blond hair falling past his chin. His voice-- his voice was soft and low and fleeting.

  
Panicked, Isak turned this way and that. He was attracting curious, suspicious glances from the crowds around him. He searched the throng of brown and golden hair for a wiry frame among these beasts of men.

*

  
He sees him again when the boy wins. Like a fierce arrow he darts across the roped line into the embrace of his father. He is a portrait of youth next to his beaming chieftain, swept up in his arms and into glory. His joy exudes but from the small smirk on his face. He must know that pride is a deadly thing. Such wisdom is rare.

  
Isak remembers little else from the games. The broad and godly figure who bested the best at wrestling, his younger brother who threw the farthest spear. The words of his father as he looked out on them all: **“That is what a son should be.”**

**Author's Note:**

> Comment below or talk to me on [tumblr](http://www.archerboy.tumblr.com) or on [twitter](http://twitter.com/goldenisaks) .
> 
> Expect an update soon! Alt er love!!!


End file.
